Data: data.worldbank.org, data sets for gdp, population, defense spending, percentage of defense spending.

Tools used: R with ggplot2

Explanation: The black line represents 2% of GDP spent on the military, hence countries above that line spend more.

This is very neat! I like that you color coded the regions also.

How many of those countries are NATO members?

Very interesting! Would also be interesting to do analysis by these regions. I can tell by looking at the graph that a much higher percentage of the Middle Eastern countries are above the threshold than in Africa.

How Israel isnt in 1st place? We spend so much on military

thanks! yeah, the World Bank thankfully supplies metadata regarding regions. Generally a great source for socioeconomic data that is easy to use! Theres even an R package to download data directly from their servers.

Same graph with labels removed and lin. regressions for country groups, if thats what you mean? a bit messy tho.

Its a dataset with 146 countries, cleaned up for NA's and such. So probably around all 30, maybe one or two less.

Can't always tell which label belongs to which point.

Can't tell why only certain counties are labelled.

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Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Both dimensions are per capita almost forcing linearity under naive assumption which doesn't relate to your main message or insight. Consider changing y axis to % of GDP to defence to make meaningful insight stand out.

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Is this one of the data sets you used?

Actually incorrect, there is no obligation in NATO to spend 2%. What the 2% comes from is a 2006 pledge by members, but that was non-binding and is a "target" not a minimum.

Cool.

Is there a similar plot for offensive spending rather than defense?

AUS & NZ say hi

Where do we get lumped in this graph?

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It's not total spending, it's percentage of GDP

yeah just getting into geom_label_repel, definitely not perfect :D

AFAIK there is no difference

Hi back from germany :)

Here you go!

Where do you put the cost of an artillery grenade?

Qatar is expanding like crazy, because SA looking sus...

Huh, that’s higher than I would have thought.

how could you possibly separate spending lmao

its relative, and not about overall spending: both NZL and AUS have a high gdp/capita, and a high defspending/capita.

Which basically means they (most of the EU) will never do it, and the US will be the bulk share of NATO missions.

Well they claim to have done just that by calling it defense spending...

You could argue tho, that the "We can kill anything that moves wherever it is in less than 30 seconds"-ability the US gets for not spending a bit of the money on healthcare and education is a bit overkill and a bit unneeded.

Many countries used to not spend that much, but have recently increased their spending in light of the war in Ukraine. Many are now at or above 2%.

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Thank you for the introduction to wbstats, it looks really handy!

Most countries actually don’t even reach the 2% guideline.

Only the UK, US, and Greece have met the target every year for the last 8 years.

Original source (gov.uk)

Actually used a different one (quite a while ago, can't remember the name), but this one looks even more functional, so thank you for the recommendation! :D

As both are per capita, the diagonal line is 2% of GDP

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It would be great to see labels for the top 10 or 20 countries by GDP (total, not per capita). This is a neat visualization.

Can you do that again with log-log transformations in the linear regression, to match the plot and idea behind using this kind of plot? Thanks!

Doesn't the US spend just as much of its money on healthcare as other OECD countries? It's just an awful system so people need to pay too.

If you haven’t checked out the ‘ggrepel’ author’s vignette I would highly recommend it!

I always try to tell people that by GDP the US military spending isn't that far out of whack. But compared to revenue it is way too high.

Ah okay cool, this was just the first one that came up upon searching! It has really nice features like cached data and the ability to search for indicators with regex.

Ah, it looks like the Subsaharan is ripe for the picking!

Although I do agree that europe could use a boost to it's army, I think it's mainly in a reduction in bureaucracy and investing more in domestic military industry. The EU has 20% more military personnel and thrice US's reserve. A large reason why expendenture is so much less is that it's aimed at defense and not oversea power projection. I.e. no aircraft carriers and nuclear subs

And its more understandable and clearer to everyone.

Sure, the sit and wait strategy. Only problem is that doesn't stop enemies from getting to you in the first place.

The US has spent 25 billion in military aid to Ukraine which is practically double the aid from the EU. And Russia isn't advancing on our doorsteps.

If the US spent zero, there's a good chance Ukraine would be a Russian state by now becuase the EU couldn't do it alone, that's sort of what I'm saying.

US remembers 2% GDP spending on military like I remember the cost of my college apartment 15 years ago.

But the US kind of needs the power projection capability to be a useful alliance member. Having a strictly territorial-defense oriented US military wouldn't do NATO any good. If it can't get to the battle, what use is it?

Unlikely, European countries do not need to increase their defense budget, regardless of the US being part of NATO. Unless you think the US declares war on Europe.

No one spend more in Ukraine than Europe. Military aid is just a part of what is necessary.

I used this:

#   geom_smooth(
#     method = "glm",
#     formula = y ~ x,
#     method.args = list(family = gaussian(link = 'log')),

is that not how to do a log-log-transformation in ggplot2? So far haven't worked with a lot of log-scaled data

EDIT: ah, seems to only log y. That explains the curvature.

Yes. The US spends a higher percentage on healthcare than any other country. Significantly higher than other ocad countries. Problem is the system is not efficient. Huge amounts go into administrative costs because it isn't centralized. Wages for health professionals are also a lot higher in the states than any other country. And drug costs are higher than everywhere else too.

A little note on the graph saying the black line represents 2% would help.

What’s nuts is that in the 18th century, military spending was around 30% of GDP for many countries.

Gotta fund the religious as well 🤷‍♂️

How much is that target driven by the desire of the US defense industry to sell more stuff?

That industry has a lot of influence on policy, and a policy that increases sales and profit is great for business.

the linear fit seems off could be log or sqrt fit better

That's probably one of the difficulties with this sort of comparison. Some things can't be divided neatly into offence or defence. Fighter jets can do both, for example.

There's also the "none of the above" category that can differ wildly from country to country. Does the naval budget include a yacht for the head of state? Does the army double as a police force? Is the military in charge of completely random shit like hydro dams? Sweden is famous for using highways as air force bases. Does that mean they can count highway construction as defence spending?

US and China are both happy to lend them money to buy our weapons.

Military spending, even in the US, is almost an order of magnitude smaller than social security spending. Many western European countries have about 20% GDP spending on social security (including healthcare, public pensions, etc.). The US spends 3% of GDP in defence, most EU countries 1-2%. So defence spending is almost a rounding error here, it can be increased or decreased without almost affecting social security spending.

Its a line indicating 2% of gdp, should've added a label to make it more clear

Some reports say this is still the case for North Korea.

edit: source for the doubters:

>That accounts for 13.4 to 23.3 percent of the country's average GDP of $17 billion during the period.

An extremely important part though.

That's not really what that term 'defense' means.

There's no distinct 'offense' budget.

Really? Which ones?

Most countries would have had tax bases of only 10-20% of GDP back then so even if say, 70% of the national budget went on defence that'd be implausible.

Interestingly the correlation coefficient seems to be larger than 1.0.

Hope you didn't clean up NAmibia

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It's an important part, but American military aid is overpriced so any comparison of monetary value is useless. There is a lot you can do with 10 million, other than having a single missle.

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Actually, if the plot is already using transformed data inside the ‘aes()’ call, then you should be able to just use this if I’m not mistaken:

> geom_smooth(formula = y ~ x, method='lm')

The US spends more than $4500 per capita on military. Your chart looks like the US spends about $1000 per capita. What number did you use for US military spending for this chart?

Yes, but if you want to repel an invasion, you do need missiles, there's no way around it. Humanitarian aid is very important for lessening the pain that is already there, but it isn't going to stop Russia from hurting more.

Historically this hasn't been a problem, since the hypothetical war NATO was designed to fight was with the Soviet Union, and that war would happen when the Soviet Union actually invaded alliance members.

The situation today is quite different. The present and future threat is an aggressive China. For the continental alliance members to be useful in that fight they would need to invest heavily in power projection. And that simply isn't going to happen until China has already gone rogue, and will come too late to make any difference (see the war in Ukraine for reference).

Instead the U.S. will have to lean on allies in the Western Pacific. A re-armed Japan is going to be key, as well as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia. Defensive alliances with Vietnam and Indonesia also need to be established. China needs to be put in a position where a stunt like that of Russia in Ukraine would be absolutely suicidal to Chinese society, economy and instustry.

Fake info.

Around 30% of countries says they spend more than 2% of GDP on their military.

Perks of living close to russia

Thanks.

But what a waste. What an effing waste for mankind to spend that much on protecting him from self.

High military spending is very much not a good thing. While necessary for most countries, military spending is not really productive, it doesn't help build a better, more capable society and it's a lost opportunity to spend on things that would.

That's at best case, at worst case someone starts thinking that all that spending should really be put to some use and goes and does something catastrophically stupid like invades a neighbor.

That in modern world almost universally ends badly for all parties involved.

Yes but that wasn't the point. The point was explaining the different approaches. The US is an ocean away from anyone that isn't Central America or Canada. European NATO members were a couple hours train ride at most (besides the UK) from the reason NATO was formed, the USSR. Different geographical locations require different solutions.

I assume they mean during the big conflicts because armies would be levied and trained specifically for conflicts instead of having standing armies. It's not absurd to think that during the napoleanic wars, the prussian expansion wars, and german unification wars that countries would be spending that much of their GDP. In peacetime though, i highly doubt it. Even during the naval revolution from 1860(ish) on through WW1 i doubt it reached 30% GDP, even the Royal Navy.

Missiles aren't that effective for defense. You can buy 100 million bullets for the price of 1 missile.

Thanks for that, great graphic. Why did you choose exactly these 10 countries to be named specifically? Also sad that so much money is spent on military.

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It got us internet so I’m not complaining

It could be more efficient but it isn’t that bad a large portion of the US budget goes into healthcare and r&d

Am you are after all writing this text against military spending against on a thing developed using military r&d, mainly the internet (and likely on a GPS enabled device)

TBH, this is a really stupid take and makes me think you're not that familiar with the topic of defense.

You can't stop a main battle tank with your rifle, actually no armored vehicle - you'll at the very least want AT missiles for those. And if you haven't noticed yet: Russia has a lot of these vehicles.

Now, if you were talking about non-AT AG missiles like HARM, you need those for defense (and retaking territory) too, mainly for attacking behind the lines equipment like artillery and air defense, which both are extremely important for supporting your enemies offense.

In case you missed it, it's no longer WW1.

That’s not how you win Risk; Africa is worth 3 troops a turn.

Isn't 2% a NATO requirement?

The inconpicuous beige dot with the 100k GDP and Polish levels of military spending....that's Switzerland....isn't it.

Why do some of the colors not match the legend

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It’s only perceived as “overkill” and “unnecessary” until you need the USA’s help. Then you’re glad that the US spends money on defense so her friends don’t have to.

There’s plenty of defense industry globally. Most sovereign states prefer local defense goods.

Why not just put the % of GDP per Capita on Military Spending on the y-axis? This way the audience wouldn’t need to do the math themselves.

This truly is beautiful (the data, not what it represents)

It's alright but colors are not clear and I wished points were numbered and sorted highest to lowest in a legend on the side. Maybe harder to implement than I imagine.

If only you took the colorblinds into consideration. I can't make anything of it unfortunately.

UK please, darling.

And vice versa for curtailing emissions.

Nice. But I suggest the removal of the alpha, as it just makes it more confusing, adding no new information to the plot.

Qatar, Saudi and Greece are the outliers on the chart. They don't have domestic defense industries. Greece is NATO.

They’ve been rebuilding: https://newlinesinstitute.org/greece/the-recent-turnaround-of-the-greek-defense-industry/

Canada and Mexico slackin on the North American Defense Union ^TM

Well that’s fitting since North Korea is in many ways still living in the 18th century.

Perhaps military sales to other countries are not counted. Israel exports a huge amount of arms.

I didn't say you should try to stop a tank with a rifle, what a stupid suggestion. I'm saying that most of the warfare in Ukraine is by infantry right now. If that is "WW1" for you, whatever.

For anyone reading this:

You can display a list of colourblind pallets directly in RStudio, run the following with RColorBrewer installed:

display.brewer.all(colorblindFriendly = TRUE)

What are those countries in Latin America?

Why are they both normalized per capita? If it's just Defense vs GDP, what does per capita have to do with it on both axis?

It should still be noticeably higher because each measure is only 10 times the last. Not having horizontal lines makes it hard to see as well.

This data is interesting, but it is not beautiful.

Agreed. Once you figure that out the presentation is quite interesting.

FWIW that agreement was freshly recommitted to in in Dec of 2022 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_210091.htm#:~:text=Allies%20agreed%20NATO's%20civil%20and,increase%2C%20respectively%2C%20over%202022.

The log scale is somewhat misleading. It makes it look like Ukraine and Russia aren't that far apart when in fact Russia is roughly 4x higher per person (and has many more people) than Ukraine leading to a huge imbalance in available weapons in the current war.

It’s a valid question. Not sure why the downvotes. It’s one of those things that is said so often, defense = military, no one really thinks about what the offense would be.

Wouldn’t all non-defense spending be offense spending? Transportation, agriculture, education etc. everything non-military related?

They should have done it a decade ago

Yes, but most of Europe doesn’t honor the requirement. Some are recommitting after the Ukrainian invasion.

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It’s bizarre you’d claim defense spending isn’t productive when defense spending in the US alone gave the world GPS, the internet (ARPANET), EpiPens, BugSpray, Duct Tape, Computers via the Army Research Laboratory, Nuclear Energy, Walkie-Talkies, and more.

I would consider quite a few of those inventions to be instrumental in our building of a “better, more capable” society.

No. There was a 'pledge' for 2% back in 2006, but it is non-binding.

These are all unintended side effects, inverse of collateral damage really. Imagine if the same sums that go to military would have been put towards R&D with a goal of civilian use to begin with.

Those aren’t “unintended side effects” they were purposeful research projects. Do you realize how much money and planning and coordination went into projects like ARPANET, in conjunction with universities and the corporate world? To act as though these were accidents as if the DoD just stumbled into making GPS or ARPANET is just incredibly naive, to the point of sounding purposely facetious. You’re just making these claims that have no basis in reality and completely ignore the history of these projects and defense spending because you don’t want to admit that it has resulted in some pretty innovative projects.

Wait a second, is that Europe spending money on military? Who could've thought

You said that "missiles are not that effective for defense". If Ukraine is being invaded using e. g. lots of armored vehicles and you claim that missiles are not effective, what should they use instead? You only mentioned your "100 million bullets".

Adressing the current situation on the ground: So what? Infantry needs to be supported by vehicles, artillery and missiles to be properly effective. Zelensky was specifically asking for more Patriot systems (AA missiles!) just a week ago, they need them to shoot down Russian cruise missiles which are targeting Ukrainian infrastructure - yet you claim sending missiles is not effective for defense - huh?

If you're so convinced, please give me a concrete example of what missile that the US is sending to Ukraine is not effective or a waste of money.

^(And I don't think sending 100 million bullets would be worth it instead, Ukraine isn't actually short on mags. What they will need a lot of is AA missiles and artillery munition such as shells or GMLRS missiles.)

That’s bullshit of you to combine Europe and Central Asia. Not distinguishing between Western Europe and the rest of it is one, but this?

Yup, and it's not like all of it just goes into making a shit ton of bombs either. A good third of the budget is just for salaries and maintenance of existing equipment. We could legitimately cut half of the budget and still be the largest, best-maintained, and most modern military on the planet.

The real money waster is bullshit blank cheque contracting(over 400B in 2021) and outright money laundering/theft. There's a reason the pentagon has never passed an audit. Over half of its assets are just straight-up unaccounted for.

The modern U.S. military is a money sink for the corrupt and greedy, and every single politician that votes for yearly budget increases are complicit.

Of course they built them for a purpose, for the purpose of military use. It just happened that they were also incredibly useful for civilian use unlike many other DoD projects, but these projects weren't funded with that in mind.

Does it really matter what the intended purpose was..? You stated that it never led to a better society, I’ve now given you quite a few examples of when defense spending absolutely led to a better society.

Instigating wars and attacking other countries for their assets sure feels like offense rather than defense.

Saneinsouthcounty: It sure would be great if it were impossible to even do this graph due to lack of data

This is a good way of visualizing it, you could also make the dots big and small representing the population of the country?

You are cherry-picking random good accidents, what about all the rest of the military spending that had no other value than the military type? And do you think these advancements wouldn't have happened in civil sector anyway? They happened in military research because that's where the money went, not because military spending is inherently useful.

Nice graph. Though I would actually take out having it be “per capita.” Since you’re using that for both axes, it’s actually not having any effect on the data points.

Looks more like 1% tho

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The US federal government spends 3.7% of its GDP on the military, but they spend 16.3% on healthcare.

In 2020 it was $2,187 per capita on the military, but they spent $11,945 per capita on healthcare.

As far as % of GDP, in 2020 it was 3.7% on military and 16.8% on healthcare.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175077/healthcare-military-percent-gdp-select-countries-worldwide/

Which country of LATAM is that green point on the bottom left?

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It's because back then defence was the primary function of the state. The welfare state had not been invented yet, and governments had far fewer responsibilities than they do today.

Oh, I missed that, thank you!

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Why do the colors not match the legend?